As you set your professional and organizational goals for 2024, take a second look.
Where do diversity, equity, and inclusion fit in with them?
Is DEI its own bullet point?
Or do you see it embedded?
When you put a DEI lens on all your goals, it’s harder to overlook or delay it.
Put that lens on now, as the year begins, and see all of your work with a new perspective.
Happy New Year from all of us at Fletcher Consulting.
Compared to the DEI inundation of 2020 and 2021, this was a slow year. We saw fewer inquiries about DEI consulting in 2023.
But to be honest, I was happier with the work.
As a result of the Black Lives Matter awakening, the volume of RFPs in ‘20/’21 was incredible—in both senses of the word. It was an amazing display of interest. And so many of them weren’t credible.
“We want to end systemic racism! What can you do in 60 minutes?”
Yes, that wave of interest—or perhaps “bubble” is the more accurate word—has burst.
But, the organizations that are still engaging with DEI are doing so because they know it matters. They aren’t just responding to peer pressure or public relations anxiety. They’re responding to an internal demand, with support from leadership and from across the organization. With clients in that mindset, you can make real progress.
So I want to say a special thank you to the clients we worked with in 2023: the ones who have continued to do the work in spite of “DEI fatigue,” budget cuts, and Supreme Court decisions. Thank you for trusting Fletcher Consulting to partner with you in your DEI work.
DEI workshops sometimes get a bad rap for not being “effective,” and that is probably true if they’re one-offs. Impact doesn’t come from workshops alone, but from the work the organizations do in the months between sessions. So we’re particularly grateful for clients who took us up on our offers of learning series, such as Housing Partnership Network, Social Finance, Analysis Group, and the Mayor’s Office of Housing Stability.
We were also pleased to support several clients as they broadened their DEI work to include different groups like operations staff, boards, and cohorts moving into supervisory roles for the first time: clients like WilmerHale and the New Bedford Whaling Museum come to mind.
And the clients who focused on affinity group programs, such as AltmanSolon, or bias-proofing systems such as interviewing or professional development, like Mintz and Columbia Law School Administration.
We were fortunate to work again this year with many clients who have engaged with us over multiple years, such as Addison Gallery; Allen & Overy; Arrowstreet; Berkeley School of Law; Bernstein, Litowitz, Berger & Grossman; Boston Bar Association; Columbia Law School JD & LLM Programs; Fordham Law; Harvard Global Support Services; Institute of Contemporary Art; Mount Auburn Cemetery; Museum of Fine Arts; Office of Senator Elizabeth Warren; St. John’s Law; UVA Law; and Yale Law.
And to welcome new clients this year: CFAR, Curriculum Associates, Disability Rights Advocates, Form, Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts, Morse, and Trailstone Management Corp.
As we enter the new year, we look forward to continuing the work with our existing clients and to engaging with new clients who are early in their journey.
Best wishes to all as we close out 2023 and get ready to ring in the New Year.
We’re all human. We all make mistakes. We all commit microaggressions at some point.
What matters is what we do after: how we respond when somebody gives us feedback that we’ve hurt them. Ideally we own the impact we had, no matter what our intentions were. Then we apologize, do our best to remain engaged with them, and try to do better.
It’s simple advice, but hard to follow consistently.
It’s even harder when company policy or practice advises you not to.
Say a white employee’s comments are offensive to a colleague of color. The recipient lets it go at first. But after several more incidents, they decide to ask HR or a manager for help.
Unfortunately, that’s when things can get weird. Human Resources and managers have to hold the tension between the interests of employees and the interests of the company.
In one case, a manager advised the white employee not to apologize—and to be careful about further interactions. The manager was concerned about a claim of a hostile work environment.
To be clear, I’m not giving legal advice. And any employment lawyers reading this might be thinking that’s exactly the thing to do. A potential claim from someone in a protected class is a serious matter in a professional context.
But in any other setting, refusing to apologize is guaranteed to make things worse.
It takes a leap of trust to tell a colleague you’ve been hurt by something they did, and to offer feedback that might be taken as an attack. It takes a leap of trust to truly take in the harmful impact of our actions when our intent was benign.
Colleagues who have been working together for a long time may have built enough mutual trust to resolve the situation in the same way we would if we stepped on someone’s toe: “Ouch!” followed by “I didn’t mean to, but I did, and I’m sorry, and I’ll be more careful.”
But if you don’t know each other well, this is more fraught.
We’re all human. We mess up. But we can also empathize, connect, and resolve our differences. Unfortunately, our desire to avoid personal blame or corporate liability can lead to policies and practices that prevent us from being human and working things out. I wonder—how many legal claims could be avoided by someone making a sincere apology?
When we build defensiveness into our institutions, we ensure that people who experience harm will continue to experience harm. And they’ll be watching the clock—and the job listings—until they can find a more humane workplace.
It’s not so hard to give a sincere apology. That is exactly what you would do if you stepped on someone’s toe.
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